20 de outubro de 2013

Kobo’s latest partner is La Central, an indie bookseller based in Barcelona and Madrid. According to the press release they have a total of 8 stores (and a website), and they plan to start selling Kobo’s ereaders and ebooks by 12 November. They have confirmed that they will be carrying all models in their stores as well as on their website.

One of the world’s most powerful literary agents has attacked Amazon’s publishing arm, accusing it of “greed” and “megalomania”.Andrew Wylie, who has been dubbed “The Jackal” for his aggressive approach to deals, turned on the online giant amid frustrations that the company’s policy of offering huge discounts on titles is hitting publishers’ profits.

Good e-Reader sat down at the Frankfurt Book Fair today with Theresa Horner, Vice President of Digital Content at Barnes and Noble, to talk about the current state of the Nook division, the associated Nook Press self-publishing platform, and the upcoming affiliate drive to help authors receive an additional benefit for driving their own fans towards ebook purchases that offer a return on the transaction. One of the several interesting topics discussed was Horner’s pronouncement on the current status of the Nook division, something which the online rumor mill has alluded to more than once as a stone around Barnes and Nobles’ neck, along with rumors that the retailer is trying to unload its e-reader and tablet division.

With a greater-than-ever focus on digital publishing at this year’s Frankfurt Book Fair, several companies took advantage of the attendance and industry focus to launch or offer sneak previews of their ereaders and tablets.

Frankfurt Book Fair has grown into an event that encompasses so much about the publishing industry, with special events focused on self-publishing and six different exhibit halls dedicated to various aspects of digital publishing. But what once was known to be simply a rights fair still serves as a hub of copyright issue, as evidenced by the Copyright Clearance Center’s panel, “Open Access: The Force Remaking Publishing.” Good e-Reader covered the event live, then sat down with CCC’s Christopher Kenneally, Director of Business Development, to talk about why open access—specifically in research and scholarly publishing—is such a vital force in publishing.

At Publishers Launch at the Frankfurt Book Fair this week, Goodreads founder Otis Chandler gave a presentation about growth at the social network for books. We’ve embedded the complete slide show above…

Among the different stats, Chandler noted that Goodreads now counts more than 900,000 book reviews and over 950,000 quotes from readers’ favorite books every month. Amazon acquired Goodreads earlier this year, integrating the network with a new app.

It has become much easier to write a book and get it “published.” Or in other words the cost have come down dramatically. In the technology industry, we see something similar. Cloud computing has dramatically reduced the cost of getting started. Open source software and easy access to once advanced functions such as credit card billing, testing and other functions have brought the cost of starting-up in technology down significantly from millions to maybe a few thousands to tens of thousands. Incidentally Amazon Web Services (AWS) is one of the major players here as well, though it was more a follower than a key enabler in this case.So, dramatic reductions in cost have lead to explosions in tech start-ups, as well as in “published” authors. Where you once needed venture capital funding or the support of a publisher to get launched or achieve distribution in national book stores, you can now reach the market by boot-strapping your enterprise (financing from savings or family, fools and friends).

Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and WH Smith are taking a radical response to last week’s “news” that they sell boundary-pushing adult content in their ebookstores. They are now deleting not just the questionable erotica but are also removing any ebooks that might even hint at violating cultural norms.

The mainstreaming of digital publishing is nearly complete. I can only think of three major things that the industry still needs to accomplish:1)Comixology signs a deal to distribute Dark Horse Comics.

Customers trying to access WHSmith.co.uk are greeted with a holding page which states that the retailer is “disgusted by these particular titles” and is taking immediate steps to have them removed.While this process is on-going the site has been taken offline 'to best protect our customers and the public'. It will come back online once all self-published eBooks have been removed and WHSmith’s is sure that people can no longer access the material.

Most of the time, people talk about adult ADHD as if it is a curse. We all know the horror stories. If you’ve been following this blog for any length of time you’ve read more than a few horrifying tales of ADHD woe with me as the terrorizer and victim. Fortunately, ADHD has its upsides. Sometimes a distraction leads me to discover things I wouldn’t have otherwise known about. Case in point: my Kobo mini isn’t affiliate-linked with my local bookstore. This is a big deal. Kobo was supposed to rise from the ashes of the Google Books failure and be the ebook savior of independent brick & mortar book sellers nationwide,. On the surface it seems simple enough. People buy a Kobo ereader from a local bookshop, and that bookshop gets a percentage of every book purchased with those ereaders. Unfortunately, there’s a big catch.

Details are still thin on the Leia Reader, but I can tell you that it is built around a 9.7″ color E-ink screen. The prototype will have wireless connectivity and is reportedly going to be solar-powered. Leia is claiming that the usage time will be infinite because this ereader will charge off of the ambient light in a house.

The Pew Research Center has issued a new report today on tablet and ereader adoption in the US, and the details should come as no surprise.About the same number of Americans own tablets today as owned them in May 2013, the last time that Pew conducted a survey on the topic. At that time 34% of Americans owned tablets, a negligible difference from the 35% reported today. Also, an earlier report from January showed that 26% of Americans owned ereaders, meaning that the 24% that Pew reported today actually represents a drop.

New York Times E-Book Best Sellers

A version of this list appears in the October 27, 2013 issue of The New York Times Book Review. Rankings reflect sales for the week ending October 12, 2013.

6 de outubro de 2013

A couple of days ago I came across a brief piece in the Guardian from last year with the rather alarming title “Jonathan Franzen Warns Ebooks Are Corroding Values.” Corroding values?, I thought.Hurting brick-and-mortar sales, okay; giving us eyestrain, eh, maybe. But does Franzen really think ebooks make us worse people?

A publisher once said to me, almost in passing, “We don’t pay you to edit.” The real message was: “Editing is not crucial. If you’re an editor, what matters is acquiring.” After I’d left in-house editing and was being courted by an agency, the owner/agent said to me, “Remember, you can’t sit in your office and edit.” In other words, “If you’re an agent, what matters is selling.” One thing these comments imply is that editing is no longer the editor’s main function; editing is done on your own time. But that has been true since I went into the business 28 years ago.

HC also reported that 167 titles had made it on to the NYTimes best-seller list, including American Sniper by Chris Kyle , Divergent and Insurgent by Veronica Roth, and Pete the Cat: Rocking in My School Shoes by Eric Litwin.eBooks made up 19% of revenue in the most recent quarter, up from 16% for the same quarter last year. This represents growth due to ongoing investments in digital-first titles, including a new imprint, Avon Impulse, that has been publishing a new romance title each week.

Evernote CEO Phil Libin once envisioned a paperless world--but not anymore. As he unveiled a series of partnerships Thursday, the notetaking app's chief made it clear that physical products will play a crucial role in Evernote's future as it attempts to expand its base of 75 million users.

E-ink has gotten into digital signage in a big way. They’ve just installed a new sign at the UN headquarters in NYC that measures more than 5.8 meters diagonally.The eWall, as it has been named, has been installed the North Delegates Lounge. It was donated by the government of The Netherlands and will be used to provide UN delegates with scheduling, news, and other relevant information.

ComiXology got its start in 2007 not in digital comics, but in proving technical services to comic bookstores and fans. The first comiXology reading app didn’t launch until July 2009. It took just over 3 years to reach 100 million comics downloaded (October 2012) and just short of a year to double that figure.

Random House and Penguin may have officially merged a few months ago, but the companies still do things fairly autonomously. Most of their physical and digital book sales and marketing are still done by the same people, in the same divisions. The first big move to consolidate the two companies is via the audio division, which chiefly is responsible for audiobook production and marketing.

Scribd CEO Trip Adler told the AP that he believes Scribd’s subscription service eventually could produce $1 billion in annual revenue, particularly if other big publishers sign on.

Publishers Lunch points out that unlike other ebook subscriptions services that have recently come on the market, Scribd enters the subscription arena with a strong user base and a reputation for credibility as a platform for digital reading. “It’s a very different, higher profile partnership because of the size of their user base,” Murray said, along with their “global footprint” and comprehensive digital platform.” Murray also acknowledged that “we have better terms from Scribd that we have from traditional eBook retailers.”

Viz Media, a U.S.-based manga publisher and anime distributor, announced a deal to make its entire catalog of digital manga available through the Amazon Kindle Store. Beginning today, more than 1,500 volumes covering about 160 Viz manga series are available for download to the Kindle Fire tablets and Kindle Paperwhite devices, generally for about $6.99.

If you like supporting indie authors and you like to buy DRM-free ebooks then chances are you’re probably buying at least some of your ebooks from Smashwords, and I have some good news for you today.Smashwords launched a beta test yesterday. They’re going to be adding a couple new features to their ebookstore which will make it easier for you to transfer your purchases to your Kindle or any device which supports a Dropbox app.

One of the biggest issue publishers face with ebook production is the somewhat adversarial attitude ereader and app vendors have taken towards publisher stylesheets.Publisher styles are largely overridden by default at Kobo, B&N, and in Aldiko. Even iBooks requires you to slot in a set of proprietary meta tags before it respects your font and image decisions.

The growth of the ebook market outside the U.S. and U.K. has been slow — but 2013 may be a turning point, according to a new report on the global ebook market (PDF) from consultant Rüdiger Wischenbart. The latest edition of Wischenbart’s annual report finds ebooks “transcending their initial niche in a number of countries in continental Europe” — but the transition looks different in emerging markets like China, Russia, India and Brazil. And interestingly, in some developing countries it appears that Apple, not Amazon, is the lead player in ebook sales.

The lack of quantitative understanding of infringement and its impact has led different countries to pursue different paths, in terms of both legal actions and the use of antipiracy technologies. Perhaps the most surprising of the latter trend — at least to those of us on this side of the Atlantic — is the rapid ascendancy of watermarking (a/k/a “social DRM”) in some European countries.

The German IT trade group Bitkom has release a new report this week which shows that German’s are adopting ebooks in droves. Sadly, the same cannot be said for ereaders.A survey of 2,528 German consumers over the age of 14 showed that 539, or about 21%, had read an ebook in the past year. Almost 69% of the subgroup reported reading fiction ebooks, while 34% read non-fiction ebooks and 30% read textbooks and technical works.

For Daunt, Waterstones had simply lost sight of the old-fashioned art of bookselling: finding out what the customer wants. He tore up Waterstones' rigid centralised directives that meant every shop from Aberdeen to Exeter stocked the same books, as well as the "awful" planograms – photographs of a display table that had to be faithfully recreated in every store."That makes sense if you are selling shampoo in Boots, as it makes sense to have all the dandruff shampoos next to each other. It doesn't make sense in a bookshop, if you want interesting bookshops." He also ended the cosy promotional deals that saw publishers handing over £27m a year to get their books in prime locations – putting the latest celebrity memoir smack-bang in the window or including a title in the "cynical" three-for-two offers.

New York Times E-Book Best Sellers

A version of this list appears in the October 13, 2013 issue of The New York Times Book Review. Rankings reflect sales for the week ending September 28, 2013.